This visit was planned for three purposes. The first
purpose was to discuss my work with other researchers in the world.
I believed that my finding of normal chemotactic behavior of Dictyostelium
cells which have defects in lipid composition and known signaling pathway
has some significance for the researches both on chemotactic signaling
and membrane lipids. I wanted to hear opinions on my work from various
researchers in the world. The second purpose was to learn from the
latest researches in the world. Finally, the purpose of this visit
was also to get used to discuss in English. For these purposes, I planned
to attend 49th annual meeting of Biophysical Society in United States
of America. I chose this meeting because I knew that attendees of this
meeting have large attention on the role of membrane lipids. Advices
from them seemed to be most useful. In addition, I thought that I could
hear many presentations on resent studies.

I participated in the 49th annual meeting of Biophysical Society in
United States of America. The meeting was held from 12th to 16th on February
2005 at Convention Center in Long Beach, Los Angeles. Poster sessions
were scheduled everyday and my poster presentation was scheduled on 15th
on February. I presented a poster whose title was gAberrant regulation
of PI(3,4,5)P3-dependent pathway in a lipid metabolism mutant during
normal chemotaxish. During the meeting, we had 18 periods of oral presentation,
and multiple symposium and platform sessions were held in each period
at the same time. There were 20 symposium and I attended 4 symposium
which were focused on advances in single-molecule detection techniques
and fluorescence microscopy. There were 64 platform sessions and I attended
10 of them mainly focused on various intracellular signaling molecules.
I also joined discussion on several posters at the poster sessions.

At the annual meeting, I could hear many comments on my research. The
audience was mainly the researchers who are also tackling with chemotactic
signaling, and they seemed to be attracted to my work. One of them got
much excited and eagerly encouraged me to publish a paper as soon as
possible. Another one suggested that the analysis of downstream signaling
pathway is needed. It was interesting and very wonderful experience for
me to hear their live comments and talk about what is the interesting
point and how my study should be complemented by other experiments. By
attending several oral presentations, I learned a lot of latest researches
in the world. I heard many talks on researches using single-molecule
imaging techniques, fluorescent correlation microscopy, fluorescent resonance
energy transfer (FRET) and other fluorescent microscopic techniques.
I found that these techniques are now being popular. One of attractive
researches for many researchers is revealing intermolecular interaction
using fluorescent techniques such as FRET. Particularly, the study on
the analysis of the interaction between lipid molecule and proteins in
the membrane using FRET was interesting for me.

The visit had many positive effects on both my work and my attitude
to research. I realized that I should utilize more chances to discuss
my work with various people. Especially, researchers in foreign countries
seem to be more active and express their feeling straightforward than
Japanese researchers. Therefore, I can know whether my work has significance
or impact in the research field easily by their reaction. In order to
make my work good, I would like to discuss my work more frequently with
people in other laboratories.